Yes, I believe a pitcher has the ability to "win" games. To manage a game, pitch to a score, last a full season, help his team win as often as possible. I've shown examples of how a pitcher might actually sacrifice things like ERA, K/9, etc, to raise his teams chances of actually winning one particular game, and many games during a season.

Pitcher A throws 95 all the time. He doesnt save anything in the tank, he pitches the same in all circumstances. He wins more blowouts, but loses more games because he's more fatigued in close games.

Pitcher B throws 88 most of the time, dials it up to 95+ when he needs to. The 7-0 win he could have had? It's 7-4 now. But the close game that Pitcher A loses, he wins. He is 2-0, and Pitcher B is 1-1. Pitcher B has a higher ERA, but Pitcher A is more effective.

Pitcher A finishes 17-12 on the year with a 3.00 ERA. Better numbers overall, based on giving everything he's got all season.

Pitcher B finishes 20-10 on the year with a 3.25 ERA. He wins more games because that he is BETTER than Pitcher A in big situations, because he has more in the tank when he needs it. When he doesn't need it, he lets up, and wins the 9-6 game you rip him for.

I know it's not that easy. Just like you can't look at any one stat and say "3 ERA and 3.25 ERA? Well the 3 ERA guy is better!" You don't know everything that led to that. And you could probably dig deeper and deeper, but unless you watched every inning of that pitcher's starts, you won't know the whole story of that pitcher's season.

You don't think that, at least over a sufficiently large sample, W/L record might give insight into how good a pitcher was at pitching situationally when compared to ERA and run support? Or over a very large sample, ERA and league ERA alone?

The conclusion is fairly obvious. Jack's records are clearly the result of how many runs are scored when he pitches and how many runs he allows. Thus, his ERA (or RA), along with his innings pitched, are a perfectly accurate measure of how valuable Jack has been to his teams.

And the article conclusion:

[T]he evidence presented does suggest that anytime a pitcher is tagged with a reputation that indicates that his (adjusted) ERA is not indicative of his pitcher contributions, we should take it with an extremely large grain of salt, and not believe it unless there is clear evidence that it is true.
Joe Sheehan's Jack Morris Project:

What we now know is that instead of "pitching to the score," as his supporters claim he did, Morris actually put his team behind in 344 of his 527 career starts. All told, Morris blew 136 leads in 527 starts, or about one every four times out, and that's using a generous definition of "blown lead." Take this with a grain of salt, but having gone through the man's career, I wish I had tracked the number of times Morris turned a lead into a tie. He would quite often turn 2-0 into 2-2, then 4-2 into 4-4, before leaving with a 5-4 lead. If I lose my mind at some point, perhaps I'll go back through his career and track those occurrences.

Conclusion

As I said, I don't know what the performance record of someone who had successfully pitched to the score would look like. I am certain, though, that for a pitcher to build his Hall of Fame case on the notion that he did such a thing, he couldn't have put his team behind in nearly two-thirds of his career starts, and he couldn't have blown leads once a month throughout his career.

Posted by burnsy483 on 12/6/2012 4:51:00 PM (view original):Pitcher A throws 95 all the time. He doesnt save anything in the tank, he pitches the same in all circumstances. He wins more blowouts, but loses more games because he's more fatigued in close games.

Pitcher B throws 88 most of the time, dials it up to 95+ when he needs to. The 7-0 win he could have had? It's 7-4 now. But the close game that Pitcher A loses, he wins. He is 2-0, and Pitcher B is 1-1. Pitcher B has a higher ERA, but Pitcher A is more effective.

Pitcher A finishes 17-12 on the year with a 3.00 ERA. Better numbers overall, based on giving everything he's got all season.

Pitcher B finishes 20-10 on the year with a 3.25 ERA. He wins more games because that he is BETTER than Pitcher A in big situations, because he has more in the tank when he needs it. When he doesn't need it, he lets up, and wins the 9-6 game you rip him for.

I know it's not that easy. Just like you can't look at any one stat and say "3 ERA and 3.25 ERA? Well the 3 ERA guy is better!" You don't know everything that led to that. And you could probably dig deeper and deeper, but unless you watched every inning of that pitcher's starts, you won't know the whole story of that pitcher's season.

I am not explaining this scenario again. It's been several times.

But if that 3 win difference could just as easily be explained away with run support, is it really telling the story you think it is?

Without having watched every start for both of the pitchers, I wouldn't know the story you told by looking at the W/L record. And if I did watch every start for both pitchers, I wouldn't need the W/L record to know that one pitcher was better in big situations.